


almost too sweet!

by fricklefracklefloof



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, LITERALLY, Sugar, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, ali writes about baking again, blue and noah's friendship is my everything, it gets better though, it was supposed to be fluff and then it wasn't, like a little bit, no beta no revisions we die like men, rated t but only because i let people say fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25190473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fricklefracklefloof/pseuds/fricklefracklefloof
Summary: Noah and Blue make cookies.
Relationships: Noah Czerny & Blue Sargent
Comments: 7
Kudos: 11





	almost too sweet!

“Can I use your kitchen?”

Blue glanced up from her book to find no one standing in front of her, contrary to what her ears had told her. Normally she would have thought she was just hearing things, but Blue knew her friends better than that.

Sure enough, she blinked, felt a chill, and then, as if he’d been there all along, Blue felt her friend Noah lean against her by her spot next to her favorite tree. His head was rested on her shoulder to look at whatever book she was reading. 

Blue closed her book slightly, keeping one finger inside to save her place. “Why?”

“I can’t use the one at Monmouth. You _know_ that. It’s disgusting!”

Blue knew full well what disgrace of a “kitchen” Noah was referring to, one with a refrigerator right next to the toilet, but that wasn’t what she was asking. “No, that’s a given. What do you need a kitchen for?”

Noah gave a goofy smile. Normally this interruption would have irritated her slightly, but Blue couldn’t be mad with that expression.

“To bake,” he said casually.

Blue hated to remind Noah of his deadness, but the glaring issue here was too much for her not to point out. “You can’t eat, Noah.”

“You can eat it, then,” Noah responded without hesitation, as if that answered everything.

Blue was still beginning to realize the impossibility of this activity. Baking, even without eating, still involved picking things up and moving them around and other things that likely required a lot of energy that ghosts didn’t typically possess. She knew what Noah was really asking: could he use her energy to mess around in her kitchen.

Goofy smiles or not, on another day, Blue might have turned him down. It was her energy, after all. But Noah had seemed more down lately—he was certainly decaying, and it was evident to her just how much decaying seemed to take a toll on him. Noah would be talking and then trailing off and then just flickering out midsentence, or Blue and the boys would hear sighs about her house or Monmouth Manufacturing, or papers would be scattered about, trash cans overturned, plants pushed over in frustration by a ghost mourning the loss of his own life. More than once, Blue had seen Noah, or half of him, or just a sliver of him staring dejectedly into the distance with an expression that broke her heart. And of course, he still reenacted his death sometimes, something that never ceased to creep her out.

Blue knew Noah likely didn’t have much time left. It hurt her to see him like this, hurt her to think about how Noah may actually be gone, for good. Blue knew she should feel lucky that Noah had stuck around for so long, but it still didn’t feel fair to her that her friend had to be dead in the first place. He ought to at least make the most of this half life before he faded away forever.

Blue stuck her bookmark in the spot she had been reading, then helped Noah up, or at least gestured for him to get up, because he was barely solid enough for her to hold him. “Alright, then. What are we making?”

\---

“Flour.”

“Yes.”

“Sugar.”

“Yes.”

“Brown sugar?”

“Ye—a little.”  
  


“A little, like three-fourths cups a little? Packed?” Noah inquired, surprisingly specific.

“Uh… yes. I think.”

“There better be enough. This can’t be just a _little_ sweet.”

“You’re not even eating them,” Blue pointed out from where she was looking through the cupboards, and Noah shrugged. He was sitting cross-legged on the counter as they went over ingredients that he had memorized.

“Doesn’t matter. It has to be perfect. Do we have chocolate chips?”

Blue selected a bag that had been tied at the top with a rubber band to keep. “Yes, plenty. Is that all?” She looked down at the pile of ingredients that had accumulated on the counter next to where Noah was sitting.

“One more thing. Do we have M&M’s?”

“I thought we were making _chocolate chip_ cookies,” Blue said.

“Chocolate chip _and_ M&M,” Noah corrected her. “My sister and I’s recipe.”

Blue was pretty sure adding M&M’s to a chocolate chip cookie recipe wasn’t anything special, but she didn’t say that aloud.

“I don’t know,” Blue said.

“ _Mint_ M&M’s?” Noah asked.

“Why would we have mint but not regular?”

“Well, _I don’t know._ But mint M&M’s are ten times better. So much flavor… they’re really just ten times better in general. But I asked about the regular ones first. I didn’t want to get my hopes up.”

Blue resisted the urge to point out that he wasn’t eating the cookies again, but she kept quiet and trusted Noah’s word.

“I _think_ we have M&M’s. Regular, not mint.” She’d never seen mint M&M’s in her life. “Well…” Blue thought for a moment. “I know someone who does.”

Noah was looking at her expectantly.

“I’m not stealing food from Orla.” Well, that wasn’t completely off the table.

Puppy-dog eyes. 

“ _Pleeease_?” 

Blue resisted the urge to laugh. “Stop. That is not going to work on me.” It was, very slightly, working.

“If Orla didn’t want her M&M’s to be stolen, she shouldn’t have made you aware that they existed,” Noah pointed out.

He made a good point. Blue knew exactly where they were.

“Alright, _fine,_ ” Blue groaned, which was half genuine and half for show. “She owes me money anyway. I’ll be back.”

It shouldn’t have been that easy. Orla was gone, not on phone duty, likely on a date with some guy, so it took Blue little to no effort to creep into her cousin’s bedroom, see the _family-sized_ bag of M&M’s sitting on her bed (really, if she was going to buy something of that size, she should expect her family to share with her, forcibly or not), and take it back to Noah.

Her friend’s eyes lit up when he saw the bag in Blue’s hand, clapping his hands in delight. “That’s more than enough! Oh, thank you, thank you, Blue,” Noah said graciously, taking the bag eagerly. “I love you… you really didn’t have to _steal_ for me.”

She did, but it was more than worth it seeing the expression on his face.

“Okay, now we can start.” Noah made a magnificent leap off the counter, considering he was dead, causing Blue to jump out of the way as he almost knocked some ingredients over to preheat the oven. She wasn’t sure if it was something up with the ley line or being in the same house as her and Gwenllian that was allowing Noah to have so much energy, but Blue wasn’t complaining.

Noah baked with surprising precision and swiftness. A couple times he needed Blue to help him measure heavy ingredients or pour them in the bowl, but he was able to handle most of it. He poured copious amounts of chocolate chips and M&M’s in the bowl with more excitement than Blue had expected.

Until the heavy stirring came. 300 Fox Way didn’t have fancy standing mixers or anything like that, just enough basic equipment for Persephone to make a pie every day. Noah didn’t seem to mind the lack of expensive baking tools—though as a former Aglionby student he probably was used to having plenty of them—except that he didn’t really possess the energy to properly grip a spoon and stir.

It was almost pitiful to watch him fumble with it. Noah would grab it and everything would be fine, but then he’d try to stir, and the smallest bit of force would cause his hand to slip through like they were covered in grease. Ghost grease. Blue offered to help, but he seemed determined to keep hopelessly grabbing at nothing. She would have given him more of her energy, but she was already spending quite a bit of it just to give Noah this much animation.

Finally, after several more fruitless tries and moving the spoon a total of three inches, Noah gave up, letting out a familiar ghostly sigh that Blue recognized from his moping around Monmouth.

“It’s okay, Noah,” Blue reassured him as she mixed the rest of the ingredients together with less ease than he might have expected. She wasn’t a particularly physically strong girl, being five foot flat and all, and the chocolate chips and M&M’s and everything made things harder. “This makes my arms sore. It’s difficult.”

“I don’t remember what it’s like to feel sore,” Noah said, and Blue suddenly worried that she might have made him feel even worse.

She had expected this, but it was still awful to see her friend in this state. How did you comfort someone who was murdered?

“It’s alright. We can put these on the cookie sheets now,” Blue said, and Noah nodded and joined her; to her relief he was at least able to roll the dough into sizeable balls and place them on the sheets.

They sat on the counter together as the cookies baked. Blue licked the spoon per Noah’s request (“You have to eat the dough, or it’s not real baking,” he’d told her) as he talked.

“I’m sorry for barging in on you and stealing your kitchen,” he began. “I just… I don’t know, I wanted to feel something, I guess.”

“It’s alright,” Blue reassured him again. “I’m eating these cookies, after all. That’s your payment in return for using my kitchen.”

He huffed a small laugh. “I used to bake with my sister all the time. That was Adele’s thing. I did everything she wanted to do.”

With a start, Blue realized Noah must be missing his family. Then she mentally kicked herself, because of course he would be. His own parents and sisters couldn’t even see him at the funeral. How cruel was that? You weren’t dead, not completely, and you could talk to some random boys but not even your own family.

That was why he went back to his grave sometimes, his fake one, even when his bones weren’t even there anymore. Adele and her parents still left flowers and paid their respects for Noah every weekend. 

Maybe, in a way, this was how Noah was trying to relive the past, get back the life he lost. Remember his sisters. Bake overly sweet cookies.

Blue was still shocked by how little she and her friends really knew about him. Noah rarely opened up like this. Maybe he never saw the reason to.

Blue wanted him to see a reason to.

“She sounds wonderful,” Blue said softly, because that was all she could say. She pulled Noah close to her and rested her head on his icy cold shoulder. He was still solid, but Blue feared that this little episode was making him dangerously close to fading.

“She was,” Noah whispered, and his voice cracked slightly in that way that a ghost’s would when he was almost crying. Blue didn’t think a ghost could actually cry, but she wouldn’t put it past him.

Then their timer went off and they both jumped. Blue quickly took the cookies out before Noah could and possibly drop them, because in his state she figured anything could happen.

She put in another batch they had prepared before joining Noah to admire their first cooling cookies.

“They look beautiful,” Blue said, smiling at him in hopes that it would get Noah to give that wonderfully goofy grin that she had seen earlier.

He did smile, a little halfheartedly and not as much as Blue might have hoped, but it was a genuine one. “Yeah. I wish we had the sprinkles at my house,” he said.

“What were they like?”

Now there was a real smile, and Blue was hopelessly relieved to see a bit of the previous Noah energy back. “They were _glittery_.”

There was still a lot of batter left over. Blue and Noah worked silently together making the rest of the cookies, Blue licking her fingers occasionally (which Noah approved of) and washing her hands in between (which was the sensible thing to do, because she still had to stay sanitary).

Finally their first batch seemed cooled enough.

“Try one,” Noah whispered impatiently.

Blue held a cookie between her fingers. “I’m afraid it’ll be too sweet.”

“No such thing.”

“There is, too!”

“Not with these. It’s just _chocolate._ Be glad we didn’t put sprinkles on them too.”

“Fine.” With a huff, Blue took a bite of the cookie and received a mouthful of chocolate. “Whoa! It’s good!”

“I _told_ you,” Noah insisted.

“No, I mean,” Blue finished chewing. “Like, really good. Ooh, the chocolate’s all melty.” It was just the amount of chocolate where it was almost a tad too much, but at the same time perfect.

Noah’s smile was huge, brimming with pride. He seemed so pleased with himself and Blue’s enjoyment that it made Blue’s heart ache. “This is way better than eating them myself,” he murmured.

She hadn’t seen him this happy in a long time. This, Blue realized, was definitely worth the book interruption and the energy sapping and the kitchen takeover and the M&M stealing. She wanted to do anything just to make him feel alive again, for everything to be okay and normal again.

“Where the _hell_ are my M&M’s?” 

Both Blue and Noah startled as Orla stormed into the kitchen. She must have just gotten back. “Why does it smell so good in here?”

“We made cookies. How did your date go?” Blue didn’t even make an effort to hide the obvious family-sized bag of M&M’s in plain sight. His smile withering away, Noah shrunk behind Blue in guilt.

“It was _awful._ He said my nose looked sexy.” Sure enough, Orla’s eyes darted to the bag. “Did you use _my_ M&M’s for _your_ cookies?”

Blue beamed. “Yup! Want one?” She handed a still-warm cookie to her cousin.

Without the kind of hesitation that Blue had, Orla took it and chewed thoughtfully. She swallowed. “Okay, all is forgiven if you can give me, like, ten of these.”

“Sure we can. Right, Noah?” Blue said, glancing over to her friend and smiling at him as he nodded reluctantly. Blue piled several on a plate to hand to Orla.

Without even a thank-you, Orla snatched the plate and headed back to her room.

Noah still seemed a little upset.

“Sorry, Noah,” Blue said. “I had to get her to not be mad at me.”

“I wanted to give ‘em to you. And Ronan. And Gansey. And… Adam,” Noah murmured.

“We still can. There’s plenty left over,” Blue reassured him.

As the final batches of cookies baked, Noah and Blue took on the daunting task of cleaning up.

“I always hated this part,” Noah remarked. He was focusing on the smaller tasks that required less energy like cleaning the counter, putting away small ingredients, helping Blue when he could (it really wasn’t needed, but she appreciated the sentiment).

They were almost finished when the doorbell rang.

“It’s Gansey!” Noah exclaimed, face lighting up with excitement.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Blue said, but she answered the door, and sure enough, it was Gansey, with Ronan and Adam right behind him.

“What are you doing? I wanted- oh, hi, Noah,” Gansey said, smiling at the dead boy hovering from behind Blue. She realized how strange it must be for him to be hanging around her house.

“Come inside,” Blue said, holding the door open for the boys. “We made cookies that Noah wants you to have.” He nodded eagerly.

“They’re sooo good, you have to try them,” he added, ignoring the boys’ confused expressions.

Blue already knew where this was going, and she really didn’t want to have this conversation about Noah’s deadness again. “Come on. Before the rest of my family eats them. Orla already took ten.”

They were inside immediately.

“You can’t even eat,” Ronan muttered, but after that he and the others dropped the subject as they followed Noah and Blue to the kitchen.

“Real quick, though,” Gansey said as Blue held out a plate of the cooling cookies to the boys. “Then I’d like to talk about what we’re doing next.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Try the cookies,” Noah encouraged them.

Adam and Ronan looked suspicious. “Chocolate chips _and_ M&M’s?” Adam asked. 

Gansey, ever supportive of his friends, tried his first. “Oh, this is great!”

Enabled by Gansey’s reaction, Adam and Ronan both tried theirs at the exact same time. Adam’s eyes were wide as he chewed his slowly. Ronan wolfed his down in seconds.

“Okay, I want ten of these too,” Ronan insisted, to Noah’s excitement. He nodded vigorously and immediately began preparing a plate for Ronan to take home.

“Yeah, okay, whatever, you can take the plate,” Blue sighed.

“I thought these’d be way too sweet,” Adam observed.

“That’s what I thought too!” Blue agreed. “But they’re just right, you know?”

“This is your recipe, Noah?” Gansey asked, like a proud mother interested in her son’s activities.

Noah beamed as he handed a plate to Ronan. “Me and my sister’s,” he replied.

“My sister and _I_ ,” Gansey corrected, and both Blue and Adam groaned, but he continued. “That’s wonderful.”

Blue was afraid Noah was going to get emotional again, or even disappear, but he seemed immensely happy. “Yeah, we used to make stuff for our family all the time. We’d put all kindsa stuff in our baking, sprinkles, M&M’s, cereal…” He looked wistful, staring at all his friends in a way that Blue had never seen before. It almost reminded her of the look on his face during his funeral, staring at his family as they stood there mourning him. But this time he was smiling as if they were all there in front of him.

It was almost too sweet for Ronan to bear. “Fuck, man, I didn’t come here for this sentimental shit.”

“Nice, Ronan,” Blue scolded, but Noah laughed as if he were just a brother.

It was almost like family.

**Author's Note:**

> my first published trc fic oh boy,,, hope you enjoyed it!  
> also the cookie recipe is something i make with my own sister a lot,, it's actually amazing with mint m&m's we made them for christmas once and they were the best


End file.
